How to Install BigBlueButton on Ubuntu 16.04

There are a lot of open source web conferencing tools available these days and there are also a number of budget-friendly alternatives that still offer the same features and functions. Sometimes you can need web conferencing tools for remote collaboration, demo presentations or courses if you are an online academy. In fact, open source web conferencing software offers you the opportunity to host virtual training events, collaborate with colleagues, and offer learners personalized support without paying hefty monthly fees. The one most popular which we will talk about is "bigbluebutton" which is a very large solution used nowadays by some entities.

What is BigBlueButton

Bigbluebutton also called "bbb" is an open source web conferencing system for online learning which offers the possibility to share documents, webcam, audio, chat and your desktop during a real-time session. It also offers the possibility to record a session to playback all its content shared and it has the great capability to be integrated as a plugin with various online learning platforms like WordPress and Moodle. Bigbluebutton's session uses two major roles for users:

viewer: He can be viewed asthe student. He can chat, displays an emote icon, sends/receives audio and video, and responds to polls

moderator: He can in addition to all the capabilities of a viewer, mute/unmute other viewers, lock down viewers, or make anyone the presenter. He can be considered as the instructor.

The latest version when I am writing this article is BigBlueButton 1.1. You can have more details about "bbb" on its official website.

1) Check the pre-requisites

At the present moment, bbb v1.1 requires Ubuntu 16.04 64-bits and there is no support for CentOS. There is no installation from source so, personally I have not found a possible installation on Centos for this version even by installing each required components.

500 GB of free disk for recording for physical server but you can have at least 40GB for a virtual server

100 Mbps of bandwidth which must be symmetrical.

You must have some free disk space for recording and a good bandwidth for your bbb server if you can not respect exactly the two last points. For the end-user accessing the bbb server, it is recommended a minimum of 1.0 Mbps download speed and 0.5 Mbps upload speed. You can propose to your users to check their bandwidth through some sites as speedtest.net.

a) Check the server's locale

The locale of the web conferencing server bbb must be en_US.UTF-8. You can check the locale with the command below

If it is not the default locale on the server, please change it as below

# apt install -y language-pack-en && update-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8

b) Add more entropy if virtual server

If you decide to install bbb on a virtual server, you should improve Tomcat and other components entropy. You don't need it for a physical server. If you don't want to be blocked for long periods because of lack of entropy when starting up, you should need to install the havegedpaquage which is an entropy daemon.

You can see that there are no errors found. Now we can check the bbb configuration with the command below

# bbb-conf --check

In our case we don't have errors. Red colors show information where you will see your server IP address. Were you see bbb-web host itis the IP address used to access to the bbb web page. So if you have many interfaces, you can set the interface to use (the IP address) with the command below

# bbb-conf --setip ip_address

Or if you have an hostname, it is more easiest to use it for your client to contact your server. It's set with the same command but instead of the IP address, use the server's hostname

# bbb-conf --setip hostname

then restart bbb services

# bbb-conf --restart && bbb-conf --check

When you do some changes, you can clear log files then check your configuration again

# bbb-conf --clean && bbb-conf --check

Now to be able to access on the bbb demo page, we must install the API demos which work with JSP and which is necessary for bbb otherwise you will get a 404 Not Found error when trying to login. Do as below

The first address in green color is the link to access directly to the bbb demo1 and the second link is the one to use to diagnose configuration issues (the bbb-check package). You can diagnose by entering the address your address shown

It exists some demo meeting where you have the possibility, for example, to secure the meeting's access with a defined password given to the allowed users or where you offer the possibility to the users to select the meeting room that they would like to join.

Now you know how to install a tool for your web conferencing. You can use it not only for web conferencing e-learning but for another goal. It offers some possibilities during a session and it is an open source tool.

Alain Francois2:00 am

About Alain Francois

IT Linux administrator passionate of free and open source software, I work on Linux Systems since some years on installations and deployments of certain solutions. I like to share my experiences with a wider audience by training and conferences.

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